


Constant

by skyblue_reverie



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyblue_reverie/pseuds/skyblue_reverie
Summary: Gabriel Lorca looks at the stars and thinks about his life.  Set vaguely around Ep 1.8 or 1.9.The stars, Lorca thinks.  The stars are the same.





	Constant

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fandomweekly challenge #024, Starry Night, with a bonus for "in space." Expanded since then, 'cause I can't limit myself to 1000 words. :p
> 
> My first outing into ST: Discovery. Kudos/comments much appreciated.

_The stars_, Lorca thinks. _The stars are the same_. The stars are the only constant, though, the only sure thing in this crazy, unfamiliar universe he finds himself trapped in. He’s stranded away from home, seemingly so close yet in reality so infinitely far away. Just like the stars outside the viewport.

He’d never thought he could be homesick before. And especially not for _his_ home, the shifting walls and endless traps that make up life in the Terran Empire. But he misses it. He misses the sureness – the moral certainty. Not any moral certainty that he’s doing the “right thing” – _that_ never motivated anyone who wanted to live past childhood in the Empire. No, he misses the moral certainty that the ends justify the means, and that the ends are whatever’s in one’s own best interest. It’s a universal moral code, the closest thing to a General Order One that exists in the Empire.

Here, though, nothing is clear. Everything is muddled, _shifted_ a millimeter to the side, somehow, or maybe obscured by a filter, the way the stars are filtered on the Empire’s ships to protect the sensitive eyes of their inhabitants.

It hurts, of course, to force himself to look at the stars. It’s a bittersweet sting, watching them slide by in the viewport in his ready room. It hurts his eyes, but that’s a minor consideration. He’s used to pain far beyond what a little starlight can inflict. (It’d almost felt good, when the Klingons had tortured him with light –intensely brilliant light that lanced like needles into his eyeballs, making him scream. It made him feel almost… nostalgic. It wasn’t the same kind of torture he’d endured before, but it was torture nonetheless. The pain was almost a comfort. A constant. Like the stars outside his window.) No, the real pain is inside. In his soul, maybe, if he possesses such a thing at all.

He’s starting to hate himself, here, and he’s never hated himself before. Never even given a thought to whether he should hate himself – why would he? Hurting others, betraying others, has never been considered a bad thing in his world, not even a “necessary evil.” Just… business as usual. And self-reflection is a luxury that one can’t afford in the Empire. But now… everything he thinks, everything he does is tinged with self-doubt and self-loathing, and he can’t tell if he loathes himself more for becoming so insipidly feeble, or for still being so cold and calculating.

And... it’s exhausting, and somehow lonely, playing the part of Gabriel Lorca, heroic and noble Starfleet Captain, upholding the values of the Federation. He knows that sometimes he gives himself away, and if he’d been surrounded by a crew who came up through the paranoia and Darwin-esque winnowing of the Empire’s ranks, he would have been exposed, denounced a thousand times by now. But the people in this universe – they’re soft. Trusting. And so they dismiss his slips as slight abnormalities - quirks, maybe. Stamets calls him a warmonger, but even Stamets could never imagine the depths of violence and cruelty of which he’s capable. But he fears that he’s losing himself, slipping more and more into the role, like quicksand pulling him under slowly, so slowly.

The best and worst part of his tumultuous existence is Michael. Michael, with her huge liquid eyes and her razor-sharp intellect that capture him so effortlessly. He knows he’d let himself get too close to _his_ Michael. Being first her surrogate father-figure and then her lover had been intoxicating, and he’d cared for her more than was rational, certainly more than was wise. He’d hidden it the best he could, but she’d always known. And now she’s gone, taken from him by a simple twist of destiny.

This Michael isn’t _his_ Michael, but he cares for her more than is wise too. This one, though, is oblivious to his feelings. It’s ridiculous, really, the way he’s unable to stop his eyes from following her whenever she’s near, the raw hunger he can feel in his gaze and the possessiveness he can’t keep out of his voice. And still she doesn’t see it, doesn’t see _him_. Convicted mutineer or not, this Michael, more than anyone he’s ever met, _wants_ to do the right thing, _wants_ to believe in the inherent goodness of others, and so she overlooks what’s right in front of her. It’s a glaring deficiency, and yet he can’t force himself to hate her for it.

If anything, he finds himself feeling an emotion for her that he’d never thought truly existed. He’d always thought love was a fairy tale, a comforting lie that helped people weaker than himself find hope in a meaningless existence. But this Michael, as much as the stars outside, as much as the pain, has become his constant here. His lodestone. If anything could keep him here, could make him forsake his lifelong ambitions and carefully-laid plans in that other universe, it would be her.

But she’s not for him. She loves another, and as much as he wants to take Ash Tyler by the throat and slowly crush the life out of him, he won’t. It would be a step too far, something he couldn’t hide or explain away as a quirk of personality, a shade of morality just slightly grayer than everyone else’s in this gleamingly bright universe. It would give him away. And – just as importantly, maybe even _more_ importantly, he’d lose Michael’s regard forever. There’s a saying in this universe, _If you love someone, set them free_. He hates that saying. He hates even more that it’s true. The only way that he can have even the smallest part of Michael – her respect, maybe even her friendship (and since when did he ever crave _friendship_, with _anyone_, for god’s sake) – is to let her be with Ash. 

It’s a bitter irony that in _his_ universe, he’d taken her, kissed her, fucked her, but she’d always held herself apart from him, held some part of herself distant and unknowable, never to be shared with him – with anyone. In this universe, she might as well be as far away as the stars outside, physically – he can’t strip this Michael bare, bruise her lips with his kisses, play her body like an instrument until she’s screaming in pleasure-pain – and yet he _knows_ her, understands her more deeply even than she understands herself. He wants to own her, body and mind. But in this universe, he can’t have her body, and in the other one, he couldn’t have her mind. And after everything’s said and done, he’s going to end up with neither. With nothing.

It’s exquisitely painful, but if life in the Empire has done anything for him, it’s taught him to endure pain. So he accepts it, lets it wash over him, the staggering, gut-wrenching agony of losing what never was and never will be truly his, the way he lets the unfiltered starlight sear his eyes. In the end, the pain is all there is. The pain, and the stars.


End file.
